Letter To Benjamin Williams By Zephaniah Williams
This letter (printed by John Partridge of Newport) to Rev. Benjamine Williams, who was a nonconformist minister, written in Sirhowy in 1831, expresses his view on a number of subjects. The extracts are as follows :
On Rationalism
I would advise all men to take nothing upon trust but all on trial, whether in politics, religion, ethics, or anything else : to sit down with a determined resolution: to examine closely: and to be directed by that which reason most approves.
On Prejudice
When prejudice has shut the eye of the mind the brightest rays of truth shine in vain. When men are thus incapacitated for the reception of truth they become liable to become guilty of injustice, ill-nature, and ill manners to others; and insensible of what is properly owing to themselves.
On Friendship
We know that man is a social being and that consequently he has a capacity for friendship. Friendship is as old as the first formation of society and in its own nature so necessary that I know not how a social being could exist without it.
On The Doctrine of Pre-destination
Your conduct and your doctrine are at variance; for you are holding to your flock that God will have the number which he has decreed, and afterwards go into my neighbours to persuade them that an impotent mortal like myself may be the means of leading an infinite number of those who are already decreed for happiness (for you could not mean that such as are reprobate could be endangered by my heresy) into eternal misery. According to your tenets I could not be but fulfilling what I was ordained to fulfil, and the act, in itself, is right.
On Inconsistency in the Use of Reason
Those who distrust reason in matters of faith deem its free and unshackled exercise, not withstanding all their concessions in their pious moods as of essential importance in worldly matters, in which they forget not to use the wisdom of serpents, however wanting in the innocence of doves.
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